Description: Thank you to the contributors and those who helped. Brief description of the articles in the issue.

Description: A discussion of the efforts to implement straight through processing and standardization of the HIPAA form for long term care claims data.

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing a few of the important initiatives of the Financial Reporting Section

Description: This paper considers the question of whether the growth in the size of financial statements witnessed over the last several years has yielded an increase in the quality of disclosure around issues of financial risk and to what extent this disclosure is satisfying the perceived needs of readers of the financial statements, as represented by the investment analyst community.

Description: This article discusses communication skills and some pointers for actuaries looking to refine the way that they communicate model results.

Description: Remarks on a recent series of articles in 'The National Underwriter' on risk selection and related regulation.

Description: Software vendors participating in the A Comparative Analysis of Claims–Based Tools for Health Risk Assessment study were invited to submit comments on the study. In this document, MEDai comments on their contribution to the study's source data, and their results.

Description: A review of the book 'Indexation of Pensions and Other Benefits' by Robert J. Myers, which deals with the indexing of Social Security and government employee pension plans in the U.S., Canada, and other countries, as well as private pension plans, for which the author advocates the voluntary adoption of automatic indexing.

Description: Letter to editor responding to "“Blood, Guts, ASOPs and Delivery System Reform", interpreting ASOPs differently than the authors.

Description: A review of a book by a former Commissioner of Social Security, in which he shares his thoughts on what Social Security is, the new law, the financing, the benefits, the types of employment covered, the benefit amounts, the retirement test, and several subsidiary topics.